Inverse
by NoireGalaxy
Summary: Eren has been resting from battling the Colossal Titan and Armored Titan. His pride has been wounded, and one day, he yells at Mikasa to leave him alone, and wakes up to find himself in a universe where a familiar dark-haired girl is now his savior...
1. Prologue

Inverse

_If we were given a second, no, a third chance to right these wrongs, would everything be the inverse of what it is now? Would I be given the opportunity to repent and change things?_

Eren was tired of being kidnapped. The humiliation of being stuck in the Female Titan's mouth and the guilt of being rescued by cost of injury to humanity's strongest soldier wounded his pride. The scars of shattered dignity were opened once again when he got defeated by a giant smoking head and spirited away to a forest of 'big-ass trees' to find himself subject to the monsters who called themselves humans. The creatures that had indirectly killed his mother and had caused hundreds of deaths. Something inside him snapped, and he tried using the still healing stumps of his arms to choke and strangle Reiner and Bertolt to death. The reward for his efforts was being tied up and hauled on someone's back like a bunch of firewood. Eren was only reminded of his incompetence when Mikasa and the others rescued him, and one of the last remaining links to his childhood, Hannes, was devoured by the Titan that had eaten his mother. As they got back to HQ, Eren wanted to break down and cry.

A few days after his latest kidnapping, he was having an intense wrestling match with the brooms in the cleaning closet. And he was losing. It wouldn't have been so embarassing if the resident Mr. Horseface himself hadn't caught him, and by the time Jean was done laughing, Eren had already kicked him in the shin and run off towards the mess hall. The green-eyed teenager's eyebrows were scrunched up as he sat down on a bench and angrily shoveled food into his mouth, a dark miasma almost visibly radiating from him. Nobody bothered to speak to him; Connie had tried and had received a particularly vicious evil eye. The final straw was when Mikasa asked him what was wrong, in a soft and gentle voice. A muscle in his jaw working, he stood up and walked away. The black-haired girl stood up and followed him silently. Eren knew she was following him, and when they reached the corridor, he turned and yelled at her. "Leave me alone! Stop treating me like a little kid! I don't need your help!" His voice was shaking and he could hear the last word crack and falter, but he ignored the moment of hesitation and turned away from her, storming off to his room. He plopped down onto his bunk and resisted throwing his pillow against the wall, instead settling for punching it. Eren stood up and started pacing the room, trying to sort out his chaotic feelings. He leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down and relax. Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep. The last image his mind conjured up before he drifted into a deep slumber was Mikasa's hurt and stricken face, dark eyes shining with unbidden tears.


	2. 2 Bloody Scarf

Disclaimer: I don't own Shingeki no Kyojin. If you haven't read it, read it.

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_Eren Jaeger… for all your sins, your punishment is to stay trapped in this prison of altered memories… Bear the weight of innocent blood now tainted with the filth of giants… If you somehow reconcile with your family, perhaps the wings of freedom will grant you liberty…_

He woke up. Vivid emerald eyes fluttered open, long eyelashes casting shadows on tanned cheeks. He tried to stretch, but he could not. Something was restraining him, and the loss of his freedom of movement scared him more than he would like to admit. He lay on the hard wooden floor for a moment, inhaling the scent of the earth emanating from beneath. Then he _remembered._ Walking into the kitchen. Seeing his beloved mother splayed on the ground, knives stuck into her body as if she was a pig raised for slaughter. Endless rivulets of crimson staining the once pristine white of the tiles. Her dead, cold eyes, once unbelievably energetic and full of green life now staring at him unseeingly, daring her son to come forward. Backing away, vision blurry, before bumping into a shadowy figure that knocked him out by delivering a swift punch to his head. And now, he sawthe weight of his predicament. Eren restlessly tried to shift a little to see where he was and to analyze his situation, but something in his body weighed him down. Cold. Desperation. Loneliness. Depression. They swirled together and created a cacophony of shrieks and screams that willed him not to move. So he didn't.

He was only nine, afterall, what could he do to resist against this seemingly almighty providence?

He felt small, smaller than he had ever felt before, and the coldness and isolation planted inside him began to grow, and sprout, and blossom, eventually offering its offspring to the wind and letting it blow the seeds of darkness away to another fresh patch of soil in his heart, to manifest themselves in there and take root. It was an endless vicious cycle that would not stop until he had been completely submerged.

Eren heard low growls that dicussed what he could be sold for, if he was worthless, if the beautiful green of his eyes would make him more valuable. He didn't care. All he knew was the empty, hollow ache of knowing that there was no way of reviving the ones he cared about. He closed his eyes again and waited for the creeping agony to take him to where his mother was. It never came.

The noise of a door opening resounded throughout the cabin, but eren didn't bother to try and crane his neck to see who was there. It would only serve to add to the sense of doomed enslavement he was facing. He was surprised when a young girl's voice timidly whispered, "H-hello?" A young Oriental girl stepped into the room. She was quickly approached by a burly man, who knelt down next to her, patting her head and asking her kindly if she was lost. She nodded, and sniffed tearfully. "I-I'm lost… I'm scared… I-I don't know where my dad is…" The man crooned soothingly to her, "It's alright. Here, I'll help you home, oka-"

His sentence was never finished, as a gurgle and a choked, dying scream erupted out of his lungs as the young girl revealed what she had been hiding behind her back. A knife, wickedly gleaming and stained with garnet tears as she pulled it out of the man's throat. With a hardened, dark look on her face that was too mature, too malevelolent for her age, she murmured, "Thank you, but I know what you fucking bastards are doing." The dead man's companion can only mutter, "W-what the?" before the young girl sprinted toward the storage room. She came back out a second later, her small dagger attached to the length of a broom handle, charging toward the second man before spearing him in the gut. Her black hair fell in her face as she walked toward the shocked boy on the floor. He absentmindedly wondered if she is going to kill him as well, but instead, she knelt next to him and removed the rope binding him. "It's going to be alright now, I promise." she said soothingly, looking at him with onyx eyes that were only a moment ago filled with rage. He sat up as she cut the rope, not bothering to try and circulate the blood back into his wrists and ankles. He had to say something, and both of their lives depended on it. "There were three of them," he muttered quietly. The girl's eyes widened, too late, in comprehension and understanding before a third man barged into the room, looking around at the blood splattered on the walls before his gaze turned to the girl and boy sitting on the floor. "YOU! THEY WERE MY FRIENDS, YOU BITCH!" he screeched angrily, and he dove towards the black-haired Oriental, grabbing her and pinning her high above him, into a corner of the wall. His big, meaty hands started to slowly enclose around her slender throat, and she gasped and spluttered. She glanced through lidded eyes at the brown-haired boy blankly sitting on the floor, bloodied blade right next to him, staring in horror at the man's turned, exposed back and the girl that had saved him, now being slowly locked into a deathhold.

"Fight! If you lose, you die. If you win, you live. If you don't fight, you can't win!" her voice sputters off as her face turns paler. And the green-eyed boy picks up the knife. He is scared, and he is showing it, it is radiating from every bone of his body, but his eyes are full of unconquerable determination. He ran forward, knife held before him, and drove it into the man's heart.

He huddled, alone and desolate, against the cabin walls. Several of the Military Police and Garrison branches had come to investigate, but again, he wass trying to block out everything in the world. But he can't block out the girl, or her father. Her father quietly asks him what he's going to do now. He finally responded with, "It's…cold…I have no one left…nowhere else to go…where should I go, Mother?" His voice cracked on the last word. His question is not particularly directed at anyone, but the Oriental walked up to him, and helps him up. She smiled sadly and wistfully, and takes his hand. Her eyes are much different than before, now they shine with a vibrant luster and compassion. Her hands are different, too. They are not the calloused, cold hands of a murderer he had expected to feel; they are warm and soft and they envelop him with a tenderness that he never thought he would feel again when he stared at his mother's broken body.

"Here. If you're cold, this should keep you warm." A faint smile curved her pink lips up, and she unwrapped a red muffler from around her neck, and then wrapped it around his. She did not let go of his hand the whole time. "My name is Mikasa. Yours is Eren, right?"

A pause, and then a small nod. He does not question her about how she know his name; this stranger, his savior, he had only met an hour ago.

"Let's go home then, Eren. Our home." she said, and her smile is genuine this time. She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

He nodded again, and brought his new scarlet keepsake, the same color of the blood he had first seen that day, up to his nose. His voice is faint, so faint that a slight breeze may shatter it, but she hears anyways because she smiles once again when he says the words.

"Yes…let's go home."

Eren felt as if Mikasa had caught him at the finish of an endless void, and his world starts to come back into focus. For now, although he was mourning for the loss of his mother, and quite possibly his father, too, he was more peaceful than before. He remembered what his dream had said to him- blood, reconciliation, family, the wings of freedom. But he shook it off, because at the moment, he had found a new family, and he had never been happier.

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**A/N:** I hope you enjoyed the first real chapter! I'll be updating as much as I can; it's really hard to write about an AU that's not exactly an AU...

But anyways, Mikasa is gonna be the one saving Eren this time, and Eren is gonna be the damsel in distress! XD Just keep the love coming, EreMika! Enough of my

babbling. See ya next chap!


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